Saving Seafood

ALASKA: House candidates agree bycatch is a problem. They have different approaches to solving it

November 2, 2022 — Salmon was a hot topic in Wednesday night’s debate among candidates for Alaska’s sole U.S. House seat. When asked what they would do to address declining salmon stocks, all candidates pointed to bycatch as a continued threat to salmon and crab across the state.

Republican and former Gov. Sarah Palin began her answer with a shout-out to Bristol Bay and her time in the region.

“Near and dear to my heart: The fish issues, having for years set netted on the Nushagak in Bristol Bay,” she said.

Palin said the state is doing a good job with management and that it follows the “maximum sustainable yield” mandate outlined in state law. But she said the federal government needs to step up.

“It’s the feds who lack the enforcement, the bycatch laws that too many people are getting away with — especially foreign trawlers,” she said. “They’re not allowing those salmon to get back to where they need to be to spawn. We need to bust these people who are doing these illegal activities. You take their vessels, you take their gear, you take their permits, and we start teaching them a lesson.”

Read the full article at KTOO

ALASKA: After a record 2022 sockeye harvest, Bristol Bay focusing on getting fish to market

October 18, 2022 — With a record sockeye season in the books for Bristol Bay, the largest salmon fishery in the U.S. state of Alaska, industry players are now focusing on getting this year’s harvest to market.

Preliminary data from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) recorded a run of 79 million fish – 8 percent over the preseason forecast of 73.4 million fish. The fishery caught 60.1 million sockeye salmon, surpassing the previous record of 44.3 million sockeye set in 1995.

“I was pretty amazed this year that the fish came in such large numbers,” Andy Wink, executive director of the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association (BBRSDA), told SeafoodSource. 

Even with the record number of fish caught, Wink said operations moved smoothly over the two-harvest period in what are the world’s most-abundant sockeye fishing grounds.

Wink said he wasn’t aware of any reports of fishermen being put on limit, which can occur when there are backups at processing plants.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Salmon season winds down with ‘middle of the road’ statewide harvest

October 7, 2022 — Despite record-breaking sockeye harvests in Bristol Bay, data and experts point to an overall mediocre salmon harvest in Alaska for the 2022 season.

According to data provided by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute in its latest update, the statewide preliminary harvest is estimated to be more than 153 million salmon — across all species — caught during the 14 weeks spanning mid-June to mid-September that the data was analyzed.

That means the harvest is expected to be around 35% less than last year’s harvest, which capped at a total of 233.8 million salmon according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. However, this year’s harvest fulfilled 96% of what the ADFG had originally forecast for this season.

Forrest R. Bowers, ADFG Division of Commercial Fisheries’ division operations manager, said he would consider this year to be “a little better than average” and said fishing is still going on and ADFG won’t be releasing its preliminary harvest summary until early November.

Read the full article at Juneau Empire

ALASKA: Bristol Bay’s sockeye runs are breaking records, but the fishery’s growth has left many locals behind

October 7, 2022 — This summer, 79 million sockeye returned to Bristol Bay. It was the largest run on record. But over the past half-century, there has been a dramatic shift in who fishes commercially in Bristol Bay. Local permit ownership has declined sharply, and research shows that’s due in part to a regulatory change to Alaska’s fishery management from the 1970s.

Propelled by years of low salmon returns and more people coming to the state to fish, Alaskans voted in 1972 to amend the state’s constitution and implement a limited entry system. This system restricted the number of commercial fishing permits in areas around the state, including Bristol Bay.

Its purpose was to reduce pressure on the state’s fisheries and help financially sustain fishermen who depended on them. The original permit applications were also meant to favor rural residents. But since limited entry began, local permit ownership in Bristol Bay has declined by 50%. Residents now own around one-fifth of drift permits.

William P. Johnson finished his sixty-second year captaining his own boat last summer. He grew up commercial fishing with his mother in Igushik. He worked on drift boats before he eventually bought his own. He said fishing in the 1960s and 70s was tough — the runs were low and there was steep competition. Limited entry was meant to address some of those problems, and supporters say it did. But it also fundamentally changed how local people were involved in the industry — and how the industry affected communities closest to the state’s fisheries.

“In the early years, there were many people who were participating in a fishery,” said Johnson, who lives in Dillingham and is a member of the Curyung Tribe. “They hired their local people from their village to participate with them. And with the out-migration, you can see the effect that it has on the monetary return to individual village people through their commercial fishermen.”

Fred Torrisi came to Dillingham as a lawyer with the state’s legal services in the 1970s. He said before limited entry, anyone could fish as long as they had a gear license.

“Limited entry was a major switch in that you got [the permit] once, based on your past performance and economic reliance on the fishery. And then it was sort of like a piece of property: You could transfer it to somebody else, or you could use it, but without one you couldn’t fish,” he said.

Read the full article at KTOO

ALASKA: Fish for Families completes salmon distributions to communities experiencing record-low salmon returns

September 29, 2022 — In July and August, the Fish for Families project delivered more than 14,000 pounds of Bristol Bay sockeye salmon to families in the Chigniks and Yukon River regions where communities saw record-low wild salmon returns and subsistence fisheries were shut down.

In response to the summer’s low salmon returns and the growing demand for donated salmon throughout Alaska, the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust collaborated with the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association and small-boat fishermen around the state to launch the Fish for Families initiative.

Read the full article at Ketchikan Radio Center

ALASKA: Unnamed investor offers up to $60 million for Alaska’s Pebble mine project

August 12, 2022 — An unnamed investor has agreed to inject up to $60 million into the embattled Pebble copper and gold project in Southwest Alaska, an infusion the owner hopes will allow it to reverse major federal permitting actions against the project.

Pebble owner Northern Dynasty Minerals of Vancouver, B.C., is not naming the investor, a private asset management company, in part because it is not required to, said Mike Westerlund, vice president of investor relations for Northern Dynasty. It announced the new investment July 27.

Northern Dynasty is also declining to name the investor out of concern that project opponents will publicly attack the company in an attempt to discourage its investment, he said. The investor can reveal its name if it chooses, Westerlund said.

“We are trying to create economic opportunities and jobs, and these funds will help us do that,” he said.

The Pebble mineral deposit is located about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage, near headwaters that support the valuable Bristol Bay salmon fishery. Pebble opponents have said pollution from the mine will harm what is the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery, which is enjoying record runs again this summer. Northern Dynasty argues it can safely develop the project.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Bristol Bay run hits all-time record of 76 million sockeye

July 27, 2022 — The sockeye salmon run in Bristol Bay, Alaska, U.S.A. has surpassed 76 million fish, setting an all-time record.

As of 21 July, the latest day for which a count is available, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game reported a total run of 76,583,856 sockeye, with a cumulative catch of 58,298,771 sockeye between Bristol Bay’s Ugashik, Egegik, Naknek-Kvichak, Nushagak, and Togiak fisheries. The count  surpassed AFDG’s pre-season estimate predicted a run of 73.4 million sockeye salmon, the largest inshore run ever, with a potential harvest of over 61 million salmon.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: Tale of two salmon fisheries: Bristol Bay breaks record, but Yukon River collapses

July 25, 2022 — In the Bristol Bay region, the sockeye salmon run and harvest amounts set new records, as was predicted in the preseason forecast. As of Monday, the run had totaled over 73.7 million, with a harvest of over 56.3 million. The previous record was set just last year, with a 67.7 million run of sockeyes and a third-biggest-ever harvest of nearly 42 million of the fish.

But along the Yukon River, a prized salmon run is heading toward a worst-ever season.

The number of Chinook counted by sonar while swimming up the river at Pilot Station, a village near the Bering Sea coast, was the lowest on record for this time of the year, the department said. Things are looking grim for the rest of the summer, Fish and Game said in its most recent update; “the drainage-wide run may be under 50,000 fish, which is so small that escapement goals may not be met in any tributaries,” the update said. Chinook fishing has been closed all along the river and its drainages.

Opponents of the controversial Pebble Mine say two consecutive years of record sockeye runs demonstrate the value of protecting the Bristol Bay watershed, site of the world’s biggest sockeye runs, from that proposed development. They are urging the Environmental Protection Agency to invoke a rarely used provision of the Clean Water Act to preclude any wetlands-fill permit for the mine.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: Fish for Families aims to bring Bristol Bay sockeye to Alaska communities facing low salmon runs

July 21, 2022 — Bristol Bay’s sockeye run is the largest on record this season. It has been an astounding summer: More than 70 million sockeye have returned, and fleets have pulled in record harvests of more than 53 million fish.

Fish for Families is a new program that aims to share that catch. The program is an extension of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association and the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust. Since 2020, these groups have helped coordinate sockeye salmon donations from Bristol Bay to Alaska Native communities in southwest Alaska.

At the end of June, it sent out its first shipment of the season — 1,000 pounds of salmon to Chignik communities on the Alaska Peninsula. The program plans to send a total of 8,000 pounds of salmon there this month.

The group also wants to send salmon to communities on the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers that are facing record low chum salmon returns. That will require more funds. They’re asking the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for help shipping the salmon there.

The donations build off other efforts to bring salmon to communities in need in the past. In 2020, the fishermen’s association helped coordinate tribes, fishermen, local governments and Native organizations and nonprofits to donate fish from areas around the state, including from Bristol Bay and southeast Alaska. To date, the association said it has deployed $2.5 million to buy salmon and donate more than half a million meals.

Read the full article at KTOO